‘Mathematical poetry ‘is a blog that primarily concerns itself with promoting the use of mathematical equations as expressions for poetic metaphor. When these expressions use visual metaphor in conjunction with mathematic and lexical metaphor we classify this as the genre of mathematical visual poetry – Kaz Maslanka

Friday, February 24, 2006

Life has been real busy lately so unfortunately I haven’t made a blog entry for a while. One of the things that have been demanding my time has been my paper on verbogeometry. My plan has been to deliver the paper next summer in London at the Bridges conference on mathematical connections in art music and science. I have been excited about finishing the paper for it’s the most important thing I have written to date on mathematical poetry related matters. I have created a link to an expanded version of the paper on my website. I believe this paper really allows one to understand how words and their meanings can be viewed in space as well as how to approach mathematical poetry in general. Some people don’t know how to approach visualizing mathematical operations on words and their meanings. I believe this paper will give one new tools needed to enjoy mathematical poetry and hopefully inspire new poets. I have hardly scratched the surface of this genre. I imagine many who will fly past me discovering large treasures of aesthetic joy. I feel I am part of a beautiful vista while standing in my tiny garden pitched on a mountain side looking at colorful fields of mathpo expanding out to a horizon of mathematical mountains that I know I will never be able to reach much less enjoy.

Although verbogeometry has existed in my work since 1981 I have never tried to explain the mechanics of how it works. I was hoping people would find their way into it. however, that never really happened proving either I am delusional about its importance coupled with the fact that it is a cumbersome task that delivers far too little aesthetic value for the work required to understand it.

or...

it is a worthwhile endeavorblending languageswhich will induce poetic windsclearing obscured connectionsthe spiritual world hasto the physicalbringing a new rationality to artfirmly grounding one end of metaphorwhile the other is steadfastto the infinite.

I am certainly not excluding the former and acknowledging that I may be delusional. However we must also recognize that if we artists were not delusional we would never create anything new which strains the norm. For we would never have the energy required to make art in our aesthetic exile. The avante guard never dies but its endless warriors pay dearly, many sacrificing love and fortunes only to melt into the insignificant gloryless noise quantifying a lonely instant in the spectrum of time.